Texas A&M University Acknowledges Data Breach

Texas A&M University recently acknowledged that personal information on thousands of alumni had mistakenly been released to the public on April 12.

"Texas A&M University, as do all institutions of higher education, collects and stores a wide variety of personal information from students, alumni, faculty, staff and customers," Pierce Cantrell, the university's vice president and associate provost for information technology, said in a statement. "We treat this personal information with the utmost care and diligence, but there is always the possibility of human error, and, regrettably, it occurred in this instance."

"The breach affected nearly 4,000 former students who graduated before 1985 and requested copies of their transcripts," Infosecurity reports.

"The social security numbers, names, addresses and phone numbers were in an email attachment sent to someone, who then notified the university about it," according to KCEN. "The university said that an employee in the registrar's office accidentally sent the attachment to a former student who requested a transcript."

"Even though we believe this incident puts these former students at low risk of identity theft, we will notify those individuals affected, as required by university rules and state laws," Cantrell said. "We deeply regret this happened, and have taken immediate action to restrict access to this file."